“But—there are rules about what other kinds of employment you can take while you’re working for the Konigsburg Police Department. Most of us are part time, so they know we’ll be working other places to make up the salary difference. But we’re not supposed to be doing anything that might interfere with our cop duties.”
“And passing along information to a lawyer might do that?”
“It might. Chief Olema doesn’t want to ask the town for any more money for the department, so he doesn’t make a lot of trouble about what we do off hours. I work security part time out at the county fairgrounds, and Olema’s never said anything about it one way or the other. But he hates lawyers more than most cops do. I can try to find out who’s getting paid from Iowa, but it may take me a while.”
Lars frowned. “Look, I don’t want to get you into any trouble over this. I just wanted to know how Sherice was getting her information. I was worried she might have somebody watching me or something.”
“Unlikely. Watching somebody is expensive.” Erik gave him a dry smile. “No offense, bro, but I don’t think your ex would be willing to spring for that kind of money to get what few worldly goods you’ve got.”
“No,” Lars agreed. “Sherice might do a lot to get in my face, but nothing that involved spending too much money.”
“So somebody in the department may have sold some information to somebody outside the department. Like I say, I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Thanks, Erik, I appreciate it.” Lars balled up his napkin and tossed it into his empty basket. “You coming to Thanksgiving?”
Erik rubbed his jaw. “That’s next week, isn’t it? I lost track. I’ll be on duty at least part of the time so the married cops can be home with their families.”
Lars shrugged. “Maybe you could drop by for a while anyway. Get some turkey.”
“Maybe. I’ll see what I can do.”
Lars slid to the end of the booth, gathering his trash together.
Erik picked up a last French fry. “By the way…”
Lars turned back. “What?”
“Your ex know you and Daisy are moving in at the B and B?”
Lars grimaced. “Not yet. If her sources are any good she should find out, though.”
Erik grinned. “Interesting.”
“If you say so.” Lars headed for the door.
After lunch, Daisy didn’t want to take her nap, even in the bower. Jess wasn’t exactly surprised.
“I’m staying with Jack,” she insisted. “I need to sleep in his room now.”
Jess nodded. “At night you do. For now, you can sleep in the bower. That way Jack won’t bother you.”
Daisy paused, considering the possibility. “Jack doesn’t bother me.”
“You haven’t taken a nap with him before. He can be very noisy. You need your rest so that you can cope.”
Jess crossed her fingers. Sometimes Daisy could be distracted with a new concept, particularly if it involved a new word to enlarge her already king-sized vocabulary.
“Cope?” Daisy’s eyebrow elevated in an exact imitation of her father.
“So you can help me figure out how we’re going to deal with all the problems we’ll have getting you moved in with Jack. I need you to be thinking clearly, Dais.”
Daisy appeared to consider this possibility. Jess held her breath. “Okay. I’ll sleep in the bower.”
“Good.” Jess wiped off the remains of Jack’s lunch and lifted him out of his high chair. “Let’s get you both settled.”
She wasn’t entirely surprised when Daisy climbed out of the bower a half hour later. She was just glad she’d had the half hour to do a little coping of her own.
Ostensibly, she was working on a new site she’d taken on a couple of days before. In reality, she was thinking about Lars. Or rather, trying not to think about Lars. Thinking about him caused all kinds of odd twinges in her body. She decided to spend the afternoon playing with the kids and ignoring her own inclinations.
Lars arrived around five, a little earlier than usual. He had a duffel bag and a suit carrier over his shoulder. “Everything okay?”
“Fine. Assuming you don’t count the fact that we spent the day rearranging Jack’s room. Several times.”
She glanced at Jack and Daisy where they sat in the living room. They each had their own stack of Legos and Duplos, jealously guarded.
“Figures.” Lars swung the suit carrier off his shoulder. “Let me get rid of this stuff.”
Daisy got up, leaving her Legos for Jack, and followed Lars down the hall. She paused in the doorway of the bedroom, narrowing her eyes. “I’ll make a picture for you, Daddy,” her voice piped back down the hall. “I can draw it on the wall.”
Jess closed her eyes for a moment. She didn’t want to think about the amount of work involved in removing crayon from the walls of the spare bedroom.
“Make me one on paper, sweetheart,” Lars said hurriedly. “I’ll hang it up in here where I can see it.”
By dinner time, both children had begun to wind down. A day’s worth of excitement had made them tired and cranky. Jack began to fuss, refusing to eat his peas, while Daisy complained loudly about the cold fried chicken.
After ten minutes of caterwauling, Jess lifted Jack out of his chair. “Okay, mister, bedtime.”
“It’s too early! I won’t go.” Daisy’s lower lip extended to a mutinous length.
“Mrs. Carroll wasn’t talking to you,” Lars retorted. “You’ve still got half a sandwich to finish.”
“Don’t want to,” Daisy snapped.
Jess put a wailing Jack over her shoulder and headed for the bedroom. Lars’s turn to deal with his daughter.
An hour later she’d cleaned Jack up and nursed him into drowsiness. She could hear Lars’s deep voice and Daisy’s treble from the general direction of the living room, and then only Lars’s voice for a while. She listened more closely.
“Rah, rah once,” he intoned. “Rah, rah twice. Rah, rah chicken soup with rice.”
He carried Daisy in just as Jess put Jack down in his crib. She turned, holding her finger to her lips, and saw that Daisy was three-quarters asleep against her father’s shoulder. He placed her carefully upon the air mattress bed, pulling a quilt over her.
“Good night, pumpkin,” he whispered. “Sleep tight.”
“Mmph,” Daisy replied and curled into a sleepy ball.
Jess felt an odd pain in the general area of her heart, wondering, not for the first time, if Barry would have been like that with Jack. If he would have carried him to bed, cuddled him, told him he was loved.
She took a deep breath and walked back toward the living room, willing the pain to go away.
“Well.” Lars sighed from behind her.
“Well.” Jess wasn’t exactly sure what to say next.
“Kids.” Lars smiled at her. “They take a lot out of you.”
Jess felt like telling him that kids weren’t the only thing that did.
Chapter Fifteen
“Do you think this is going to work?” Lars asked.
Jess blinked at him. Then her sanity returned.
Daisy and Jack. Right.
“They’ll settle down once they get used to being here together. I mean they’re already used to being together, it’s just the excitement of being able to sleep together.”
The moment the words were out of her mouth, Jess felt her face flush purple.
Lars stared at her, his face as scarlet as hers must have been. She had a feeling he was using every ounce of discipline to keep from snickering uncontrollably.
“I mean…” She paused, swallowing hard. “Well, they’re in the same room, and Daisy’s so crazy about Jack and…” Her voice trailed off again. She wondered if it would be too obvious if she turned around and hid in her bedroom.
“I know what you mean.” Lars allowed the corners of his mouth to edge up. “Don’t worry about it.”
Jess blew out a breath. “Okay. Well. Good. I guess I’ll load the dishwasher.” She managed not to run as she headed for the kitchen, but it was a near thing.
She turned on the faucet and began rinsing plates, willing herself to keep her mind blank. Fat chance. Whenever she let her mind roam lately, it seemed to shamble over toward Lars Toleffson. Last night, there’d been a moment when she could have sworn they were going to do more than talk. He’d been sitting so close she could smell the faint mixture of aftershave and dish soap on his skin.
And then he was gone. Heading down the hall as if his hair were on fire.
Which was really better for both of them. Really. Better. Neither of them should want to get involved, not given the chaos that surrounded them right now. And she had Jack to think about. She wasn’t in the market for more complications, anyway.
Was she? No, she most definitely was not.
Jess took another in a series of deep breaths and began arranging dishes in the dishwasher racks. Maybe doing something mindless would make her mind go blank.
“Let me help you.” Lars appeared in the doorway with Jack’s dishes from the high chair tray.
Jess felt like moaning. No man was supposed to look sexy with his hands full of dirty dishes. How did Lars Toleffson manage it?
Part of it was his size, of course. The broad shoulders, the long arms. He didn’t look muscle-bound, but he did look fit, his chest outlined nicely by his knit shirt.
Jess took the dishes out of his hands. “Thanks,” she mumbled, careful not to meet his gaze.
Hair. There was just a tuft of chest hair showing at the v of the knit shirt. The buttons had come undone, maybe while he was carrying Daisy around.
Jess turned back to the sink quickly. She was a sucker for chest hair, always had been. It was like fuzzy testosterone. She loved to rub her cheek against it. Barry’s chest had been mostly smooth and she’d missed it.
Thinking of Barry had the desired effect of cooling her unruly hormones. Jess turned on the water and began rinsing Jack’s dishes.
Lars returned from the dining room with the two serving platters she’d left behind. He found a plastic bag and began loading up the fried chicken bones. “What do you do with these? Put them in the outside garbage?”
Jess shook her head. “That brings animals. I usually leave the garbage sack in the utility room until trash pickup day.” She bit her lip. “I won’t be able to do that with Sweetie in there, will I? He’d probably get into any garbage he could reach.”
“I can set you up with an animal-proof garbage can.” Lars leaned against the counter. “You just build a wooden frame with a locking top to put the can in. It’s easy enough to do.”
“Thanks.” Jess let herself smile, a very small one that couldn’t possibly be taken the wrong way. Nobody would think she was hungering over Lars Toleffson. Absolutely nobody. Now if she could just get out of here without doing anything stupid, or rather, anything stupider.
“You have a lot of animals out here?” Lars peered out the kitchen window into the back yard.
Jess shrugged. “The usual. Deer, raccoons, possums, sometimes a skunk. I guess there are some wild pigs around, and some bobcats, but I haven’t seen any.”
“Right, Cal says there aren’t any big league predators to worry about around here. No bears or gators.”
He grinned at her, white teeth flashing against tanned skin, and she wondered what it would be like to run her fingers down his cheek, feeling the slight prick of whiskers beneath her fingertips.
Oh, man, she was beginning to sound like some love-starved spinster. It hadn’t been that long since she’d been with a man—just since Barry died.
Over a year now.
“I guess that’s it.” She closed the dishwasher.
“Okay.” Lars glanced around the kitchen as if he was looking for something else that needed doing. She could think of a few things.
No. Stop it. Guts up, Jessamyn.
Time for a strategic retreat. A
rapid
strategic retreat. No way was she going to spend another evening sitting on the couch with Lars Toleffson. Particularly since they probably wouldn’t stay sitting very long if she did.
“Okay, I guess I’ll go do a little work on my sites. There’s a television in the living room if you want.”
Lars narrowed his eyes. “Your sites?”
“I’m doing some freelance work. Web site development, jobs I picked up online. Evening is the only free time I have.”
“Oh. Okay. I brought my laptop. Maybe I’ll get some work done too.”
Jess felt a brief tickle of guilt. Had he really looked disappointed or was she kidding herself?
Forget it, Jessamyn. Time to move on.
“Good night, then.”
Lars gave her a quick smile. “Good night. See you in the morning.”
Jess turned and walked very purposefully toward the study.
You are not disappointed, Jessamyn. Definitely not.
Which was a crock if she’d ever heard one. Geez, if she couldn’t even convince herself, how was she ever going to convince Lars Toleffson?
Lars watched Jess disappear in the direction of the study. Clearly, another evening on the couch was not in the cards.
A good idea, of course. Neither of them needed that kind of complication, not given all they had to do already. Both of them needed to be mature about this.
Right
. Hadn’t he sworn once he was going to stop kidding himself?
Lars looked around the living room and sighed. He didn’t particularly want to watch television. He glanced at his watch. Nine o’clock. He could probably get a couple of hours of work done before he went to bed.
It was just what he did most nights when he was home. Put Daisy to bed, work for a couple of hours, go to bed himself. He wasn’t sure why the routine made him feel so grumpy this time around. Well, okay, he had a pretty good idea why, but it didn’t make any difference. The lady had made her preferences clear.
Lars slouched off toward his bedroom, managing not to grind his teeth.
In the end, he only made it through an hour and a half of spreadsheets before he started yawning, mostly out of boredom. He almost wished Haggedorn would show up and provide some excitement, which was definitely not a sign of maturity.
He pulled on the pair of sweatpants he’d brought to sleep in and turned out the light. At least this time he wouldn’t have to get up early to get Daisy to Jess’s place before he went to the office.
He’d sunk into an interesting dream involving Jess Carroll, fried chicken, and a power drill when the noise finally woke him. He glanced at his watch, propped on the dresser beside the bed—twelve-thirty.
A heavy irregular thumping seemed to be coming from the general direction of the kitchen. He pushed himself out of bed as quickly as he could, then stepped quietly into the hall. Another thump sounded, along with a solid clang. Lars cracked open the door to the kids’ room, half-expecting to see Daisy pounding on the floor with a mallet, but both children seemed to be sound asleep. After a moment, he turned and headed down the hall toward the kitchen.
Halfway there he paused to take stock. He was wearing a pair of sweatpants with no shirt or shoes. The closest thing to a weapon he saw in the immediate vicinity was Jess’s baseball bat propped against the china cabinet.
Lars sighed. As a bodyguard, he was a good accountant. He picked up Jess’s bat and moved toward the kitchen as silently as he could.
The thumps came irregularly now, still interspersed with the occasional clang. Lars moved into the room, then pulled up short.
Jess stood next to the sink, her bathrobe pulled tight across her chest. She was leaning forward, trying to see out the kitchen window.
“Jess!” he whispered.
She whirled toward him, her hands over her mouth.
“Sorry.” He stepped beside her. “What do you see?”
“N-nothing,” she stammered. “I don’t know what’s making the noise.”
He put his hand on her shoulder, moving her gently to the side. Beneath his fingers, her skin felt like ice.
Lars peered through the window, but all he could see was blank darkness. The thumping subsided to an occasional clang. “Where’s the backyard light?”
“In there.” Jess turned toward the utility room.
“Okay.” Lars nodded. “Go in there and turn it on. I’ll stay here and see if I can tell what’s happening.”
Jess stepped down into the utility room. A moment later, he heard the click of the switch and light flooded the backyard.
Two raccoons stared up at the window from the side of the house, blinking. Jess’s bird feeder lay on the ground between them. After a moment, they lumbered into the trees. Lars stood watching their furry brown rumps disappear into the cedar brush.
“What is it,” Jess whispered.
He turned to look at her. She stood in the doorway, her arms wrapped around her waist, her face pale in the moonlight. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like her lips were trembling.
“Raccoons. They knocked down your bird feeder. It must have thumped against the house when they were trying to tip it over.”
“Oh.” She pressed a hand to her mouth. Lars watched as her chin began to wobble. “Oh, god,” she whispered, bending forward at the waist. Her shoulders began to heave as she gasped for breath.
He stepped toward her quickly and pulled her into his arms, running his hand in circles against her back. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “It’s okay, Jess. Just raccoons. Don’t worry. Everything’s all right.”
Jess’s words were jumbled together with sobs. “I was so scared.”
Gasp
. “I thought he’d come back.”
Gasp
. “I thought he’d get in.”
“Jess.” He worked on keeping his voice level. “Jess, listen to me. You’re all right. Everything is all right. It was just raccoons. Here.” He pushed her gently to the window. “Look. Your bird feeder is on the ground. They knocked it over to get at the seed.”
Jess looked through the glass and then turned back to him, her eyes still brimming. Gasping for breath between the sobs, she pressed her face against his chest again.
His bare chest. He was suddenly aware of warm breath, warm skin, the smell of her hair—rosemary and mint. His heart beat accelerated.
Go. Leave. Now. Back to your bedroom. Do
not
put your arms around her!
His body was apparently unconnected to his brain. His hands drifted toward her hips, almost automatically. He felt the smooth indentation of her waist beneath his palms.
“I just…give me a minute,” she whispered. “It’s just reaction.” She kept her face pressed against his chest, and he felt tears on his skin.
“It’s okay,” he repeated. Then he brought his hand to her chin, tipping her face back so that he could see her eyes.
The color of moss, of sea foam, of the leaves on the mountain laurel in his backyard. Jess watched him, blinking, her lips slightly parted as she drew another sobbing breath. Her nose looked damp. One leftover tear left a track down her cheek.
She was a mess. Also the most gorgeous woman he’d seen in at least a year, bar none.
Well, hell.
He lowered his mouth to hers.
A jumble of sensations washed over him, the salt on her lips, the smell of rosemary and mint, the softness and warmth of her mouth. For a moment, her body tensed in his arms, and then her lips opened beneath his, as her tongue darted across his teeth.
Lars shifted against her, angling his mouth over hers, deepening the kiss. His tongue moved, rasping against hers.
Oh lordy, he hadn’t done this in so long. And those last few times with Sherice hadn’t been anything he ever wanted to repeat. He hoped to god he remembered how to do it right.
Jess’s hands moved up his chest, her fingers sliding through his chest hair to clasp around his neck. She pulled herself flat against him as he bent over her, bodies touching now from shoulders to crotch.
Crotch. Right.
He could feel his arousal pressing against the thin fabric of his sweatpants.
Jess rubbed herself against him again, the smooth satin of her robe sliding over his skin. Without thinking, he reached for the sash at her waist, pulling it free, then pushed her robe down off her shoulders. Underneath she was wearing a sleep shirt and nothing else.
He ran his hands across her breasts, feeling her nipples jutting hard against his palms. She moaned against his mouth, her fingers tangling in his hair.
Lars reached for the edge of the sleep shirt, pulling it up slowly so that he could slide his hands underneath.
Jess’s fingers moved to his chest again, rippling through his chest hair. For a moment, he was afraid he might explode where he stood.
“Easy,” he gasped. “Control is not exactly my strong suit right now.”
Jess didn’t seem to hear him. He felt her fingers moving again. And then she leaned forward and ran her tongue across his nipple, sending a jolt of sensation straight to his groin.
He was in deep, deep trouble.
Jess was trying very hard not to listen to the cautious voices in her head that screamed
What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?
Obviously, she
had
lost her mind. But that didn’t matter since her body was currently in charge. She couldn’t seem to stop touching him, feeling the coarse hair, the smooth skin, the rough pebbling of his nipple beneath her lips.